He loved the twilight that surrounds
    The border-land of old romance;
    Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance,
  And banner waves, and trumpet sounds,
  And ladies ride with hawk on wrist,
    And mighty warriors sweep along,
  Magnified by the purple mist,
    The dusk of centuries and of song.
Tales of a Wayside Inn:  Prelude.  H.W.  LONGFELLOW.

    Lady of the Mere,
  Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.
A Narrow Girdle of Bough Stones.  W. WORDSWORTH.

  Romances paint at full length people’s wooings,
    But only give a bust of marriages: 
  For no one cares for matrimonial cooings. 
    There ’s nothing wrong in a connubial kiss. 
  Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
  He would have written sonnets all his life?
Don Juan, Canto III.  LORD BYRON.

ROYALTY.

  When beggars die there are no comets seen;
  The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Julius Caesar, Act ii.  Sc. 2.  SHAKESPEARE.

    What infinite heart’s ease
  Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy? 
  And what have kings that privates have not too,
  Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
King Henry V., Act v.  Sc. 1.  SHAKESPEARE.

  Not all the water in the rough rude sea
  Can wash the balm from an anointed king.
King Richard II., Act iii.  Sc. 2.  SHAKESPEARE.

  There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,
  That treason can but peep to what it would,
  Acts little of his will.
Hamlet, Act iv.  Sc. 5.  SHAKESPEARE.

Besides, the king’s name is a tower of strength. King Richard III., Act v.  Sc. 3.  SHAKESPEARE.

RURAL LIFE.

Far from gay cities and the ways of men. Odyssey, Bk.  XIV.  HOMER. Trans. of POPE.

  But on and up, where Nature’s heart
    Beats strong amid the hills.
Tragedy of the Lac de Gaube.  R.M.  MILNES, LORD HOUGHTON.

  They love the country, and none else, who seek
  For their own sake its silence and its shade. 
  Delights which who would leave, that has a heart
  Susceptible of pity or a mind
  Cultured and capable of sober thought?
The Task, Bk.  III.  W. COWPER.

  God made the country, and man made the town;
  What wonder then, that health and virtue, gifts
  That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
  That life holds out to all, should most abound
  And least be threatened in the fields and groves.
The Task, Bk.  I.:  The Sofa.  W. COWPER.

  Before green apples blush,
    Before green nuts embrown,
  Why, one day in the country
    Is worth a month in town.
Summer.  C.G.  ROSSETTI.

  Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds
  Exhilarate the spirit, and restore
  The tone of languid Nature.
The Task, Bk.  I.  W. COWPER.